South Dakota Therapeutic Boarding School for Girls

We are a therapeutic boarding school for girls in South Dakota and all over the US. Most of our enrolled students come from other states including South Dakota in order to create distance and focus on their issues. We serve girls in grades 6-12 from across the US including South Dakota and beyond. We’ve enrolled girls from 5 countries!

One-On-One Therapy

Every week, each girl at Evangelhouse therapeutic boarding school has a 1-hour individual appointment with their primary therapist. The focus of individual therapy can differ, but generally, it is to problem-solve, process challenges, and receive support and assistance. The therapist guides each student, ensuring that their needs, strengths, and abilities are met.

Group Therapy

The Evangelhouse therapeutic boarding school therapy program includes group therapy. Girls benefit tremendously from peer contact, which we believe is facilitated by group therapy. Girls at Evangelhouse learn they are not alone in this process and that positive peer connections can promote a culture of healing and well-being. At Evangelhouse therapeutic boarding school, girls attend group therapy and individual therapy every week.

Christian Boarding School or a Residential Treatment Center?

Choosing Evangelhouse therapeutic boarding school for girls in South Dakota over local residential treatment centers may be the best for your daughter. It all depends on the circumstances behind your concern and your daughter’s specific needs. Our program is a Christian-based, highly sophisticated clinical treatment at the forefront of teen behavioral healthcare. Evangelhouse therapeutic boarding school for girls is designed to meet the requirements of teen girls in grades 6-12.

While a residential treatment center generally offers a higher level of psychiatric care, this higher level comes with trade-offs. Students at residential treatment centers will be more severe in their illness. This means more exposure to potential hazards like violence, anger, or talk of drugs and alcohol. Residential treatment centers tend to be more hospital-like, and therapeutic boarding schools like Evangelhouse tend to be more home-like.

We feel that the home-like setting is more appropriate for the level of girls we accept. After all, we are preparing our girls for the transition home. Therefore, an environment like the Evangelhouse campus is a better place to practice new coping skills and ways of interacting and socializing versus a stale hospital-like setting. Because our girls live together on campus, they can help each other in academic and extracurricular activities.

However, that’s not to say Evangelhouse Christian Academy is lacking in our clinical department. Our focus is just more on repairing relationships with family and learning new coping skills versus medication management.  Our clinical program includes family therapy techniques as we firmly believe in the strength and vitality of family bonds, along with finding support spiritually in our non-denominational setting. 

Parental involvement in residential treatment is the most important aspect in establishing favorable long-term outcomes for your daughter, according to research. Parental participation is actively participating in their child’s treatment as well as their own treatment and progress.

Our program focuses on repairing broken relationships and helping family members to reunite and grow their fractured relationships. We have four family workshops hosted on campus each year.  Our workshops are known for being effective, empowering, and eye-opening. 

Therapeutic Boarding School in South Dakota: Facts and Figures

•   In South Dakota, about 48,000 residents are diagnosed with mental illness and receive mental health treatment.
•   A significant spike in the number of suicides in South Dakota in the first three months of 2021 has put the state on pace for a record year for suicide deaths and has prevention experts worried that a long-range mental-health crisis may be emerging.
•   New data from the state Department of Health show that from January through March, 59 people died by suicide in South Dakota.
•   In South Dakota, approximately 50% of girls age 14 and older with a mental illness drop out of high school.
•   One out of five girls ages 12 to 17 had experienced major depression within the last year.

Leading Therapeutic Boarding School for Girls from South Dakota

Evangelhouse therapeutic boarding school for girls enrolls girls from South Dakota cities like Sioux Falls, Rapid City, and all across the US. We even have girls enrolled from multiple other countries including the UK, Canada, Mexico, and beyond. Families love our convenient location, no-cost airport pickups, and having their daughter away from a negative peer group so she can focus on solving her issues.

Call us at (800) 924-4012 or review our Admissions Page for more information. You can read about our criteria for admissions here.

Life at our Therapeutic Boarding School

Troubled Teen girls from all over the world come to the Evangelhouse therapeutic boarding school for girls to heal and grow. Every aspect of the campus was chosen to promote recovery.

We have many on-campus activities from sports to horseback riding. Evangelhouse therapeutic boarding school for girls in South Dakota strikes the ideal balance between seclusion and accessibility. Our girls and their families have access to a variety of rehabilitative and recreational activities on a private and secure campus. The girls will have the opportunity to gain stability before participating in off-campus activities.

With supervision, students experience the social atmosphere, group therapeutic process, and spiritual tone of campus life. We nurture a positive peer culture that emphasizes social responsibility, accountability, and leadership. The staff leads weekly interactive small-group meetings to teach students character development within their current social interactions. Here students learn relevant ways to apply biblical teachings to their actions. As students progress, they learn to look beyond themselves to provide encouragement and support for others.

Students participate in a variety of positive peer culture development activities including:

• Biblical character development
• Discipleship small group meetings
• Leadership training
• Student council
• Weekly zone group staff feedback

If you have any questions about our approach to therapy for girls, please call us at 1-800-924-4012 or visit our contact page to receive more information.

Teens and Stress

Teenagers in the modern era face difficulties that their grandparents could have never imagined. Electronic media had compounded many of the “typical teen” conflicts that parents and teens normally encounter. Other issues, like issues with authority and control, are as old as time.

At Evangelhouse therapeutic boarding school for girls, we approach treatment knowing that teens’ interactions with their classmates and romantic interests have changed. Many of the issues we see from anxiety to acting out are rooted in screens or as a result of the widespread use of digital communication. 

During treatment, we seek to address a student’s potential lack of crucial interpersonal communication skills such as the ability to recognize social cues. Social skill is a common topic in our therapeutic environment. A lot of the anxiety and stress our students face over socialization can be traced back to excessive use of technology. 

At Evangelhouse therapeutic boarding school, girls learn how to interact without the use of screens. We teach our girls how to manage their social media and texting habits. In insight-oriented therapy, they learn how they consume media, and how media can influence how they communicate, date, learn, sleep, and more.

Our girls focus on the present because they don’t have constant access to the internet. With an absence of digital distractions, girls at Evangelhouse therapeutic boarding school face the issues that led them to our therapeutic community. 

To help combat these stressors, our therapists use:

— Group therapy sessions to develop insight into what is causing stress and to teach techniques to reduce stress. Group therapy sessions are led by a qualified treatment professional. 

— CBT- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. CBT sessions are led by a licensed therapist.

— DBT- Dialectical Behavior Therapy. DBT sessions are led by a licensed therapist.

— Homework assignments to support therapy outside of sessions

— Family therapy to prepare the student for a successful transition back to the home environment.

What Makes Our Christian Academy for Girls Unique

Evangelhouse Christian Academy offers a comprehensive, targeted, and family-focused program to help troubled girls and their families. Because each student and family is unique, we spend the first several weeks getting to know them and their requirements. Each individual and family therapy session is then tailored to their specific needs. We also emphasize group therapy sessions to promote key community concepts.